Stop the Violence!
March 17, 2009
The seventh grade Health class worked on a lesson about preventing violence. Violence in schools is a growing problem in the United States. School administrators, teachers, parents, students, and other concerned citizens continue to debate the best way to prevent or stop the violence.
The students were given five ways to prevent violence in schools and asked to indicate how important they thought each item should be in an anti-violence program. Then they ranked the items from 1 to 5, with 1 being their top priority. Each student, in turn, told how he or she ranked the items and why. The five ways to prevent violence in schools were:
• Increased security (have metal detectors, police officers, and police dogs
in school)
• Stiffer penalties (have in school “lock ups” for troublemakers, or refer
serious offenders to the criminal justice system)
• Violence prevention programs (educate students in ways to manage anger
and conflict; set up peer mediation programs)
• Community awareness (build a feeling of unity among students, teachers,
and parents; set up Crime Stoppers and School Watch programs)
• Extracurricular activities (provide more supervised activities to keep students
busy after school and on weekends)
The class then came together as a group and tried to agree on a single way to rank the items. The final rankings were: 1) stiffer penalties 2) increased security 3) violence prevention programs 4) community awareness 5) extracurricular activities.
The students provided strong arguments on why they ranked stiffer penalties as the number one priority. One student commented, “If we made stiffer penalties it would make some students think twice”. Another stated, “detentions are not enough, students aren’t worried about detentions, there needs to be more serious consequences”.
